Not sure if ts as been brought up but.the focus and many other models used as rental cars.lose there value quickly when the rental car companies dump there cars for the new models. Ie flood the market with used cars of that model

Your more traditional methods, in my humble opinion (as an engineer and MBA) would not have increased the accuracy of the results enough to justify the extra work. Thats a basic cost-benefit analysis.

Your cost-benefit analysis seems wise to me. A guy I once worked for told me, "Don't measure something with a micrometer if you're going to cut it with an axe." (figuratively)

Thanks for the work you've done with this and for sharing it. I found it very enlightening and accurate enough for my purposes. I was worried about the "conventional wisdom" that the Mk3 Focus would have a higher cost to own due to higher depreciation, but that appears not to be true for the SE trim level I'm interested in buying. That is, as long as I negotiate a reasonable deal in the first place. You helped me understand where that target is, too.

I'm guessing that a higher cost Titanium loaded with expensive options would experience worse depreciation. It seems that anyone interested in one like that should consider using that to their advantage by buying it used rather than new.

This is a good casual study, but only casual at best. Did you factor in the sales numbers for vehicles? That is, if 150 civics were sold in an area and there are 50 used cars it does not mean the same thing as 10000 cars sold new and 50 for sale. Also, if you're not going to use a random sample you should probably weight by some city size factor. By not using a random sample there's a much higher chance of user designed bias.

I don't mean to bash, but when you put something out for the world to see it will be critiqued. Perhaps everyone here reading this saw those flaws, but perhaps they went unnoticed by some and deserve to be pointed out for their sake.

I don't mean to bash, but when you put something out for the world to see it will be critiqued. Perhaps everyone here reading this saw those flaws, but perhaps they went unnoticed by some and deserve to be pointed out for their sake.

I don't think this is a matter of critique, it's more that the study is pretty pointless to the extent that the Focus is an econobox and thus depreciation should not be a critical factor. In fact, I'm not altogether certain depreciation should be critical with any car, but I suppose that's a separate conversation.

I wouldn't care at all about depreciation if my car still worked like it did when it was new.

But it doesn't.

A dealership ruined it and now I'm faced with having to trade it in much much sooner than I expected, simply because I can't stand the thing anymore. It's not the car I purchased and Ford doesn't care.

I don't think this is a matter of critique, it's more that the study is pretty pointless to the extent that the Focus is an econobox and thus depreciation should not be a critical factor. In fact, I'm not altogether certain depreciation should be critical with any car, but I suppose that's a separate conversation.

The intended point was to show all those on here who say things like "I wish I would've bought a Toyota so I didn't take such a hit a trade in" or "American cars have by far the worst depreciation..... period" that they're incorrect. Or, at the very least, it's not that simple.

I don't think this is a matter of critique, it's more that the study is pretty pointless to the extent that the Focus is an econobox and thus depreciation should not be a critical factor. In fact, I'm not altogether certain depreciation should be critical with any car, but I suppose that's a separate conversation.

Correct, the Focus is an "econobox". So are all the others kam327 compares it to here. All else being equal, it's reasonable for someone to factor the likely resale value into their decision on which to buy, "with any car". Probably, as you say, not critical, but maybe still influential. The longer someone keeps a car the less this factor would affect the decision, but not everyone can, or wants to, keep a car a long time.

I normally go a long time between buying cars so it's usually pretty far down my list of priorities when I do. (23 years and 13 years for two I have now, 5 to 17 for prior cars.) There have been exceptions when I discovered something about a car that made me want to get rid of it more quickly. The new Focus is at the top of my list for my next purchase, but from the experience some new Focus owners have had (front suspension clunk, DCT, terrible service from Ford dealer, ...) I've gotten the impression that I'd lose more on it than with another brand if I have to sell it sooner than I normally would. Other buyers give a higher priority (maybe even "critical") to likely resale value because they do not plan to keep a car more than a year or two in any case.

I appreciate the work kam327 has done because it reduced my concern that resale is as big a problem for the Focus as others have indicated. Their impressions have been based on anecdotal evidence, not any methodical analysis like kam327 has done. Despite any criticism others have of his methods, he did the analysis in a more informed and thorough way than I would have been likely to do it. His results are less applicable for anyone considering a Titanium loaded with expensive options rather than an SE with few, but they could copy his method with their own data.

... Did you factor in the sales numbers for vehicles? That is, if 150 civics were sold in an area and there are 50 used cars it does not mean the same thing as 10000 cars sold new and 50 for sale. Also, if you're not going to use a random sample you should probably weight by some city size factor.

... Perhaps everyone here reading this saw those flaws, but perhaps they went unnoticed by some and deserve to be pointed out for their sake.

When I first read the original post I wondered whether differences in the volume of new sales between brands or locations might affect the results in some way, but with my limited knowledge of statistics I could not identify what the effect might be. Same for differences between brands and cities in the total number of used cars for sale.

You point out that for different volumes "it does not mean the same thing". Can you explain how? I'm not looking for a detailed tutorial on statistics, just a general idea of whether it makes a big difference or not for the purpose that kam327 did the original analysis.

In my case, depreciation has been pretty horrible. It's costing me more per month to drive a Focus ($426/month) than what my folks are paying to lease their $60,000 diesel E-Class ($315/month, $0 down, 24 months).

Lot of comments on here over the past couple months on how horrendous the 2012 Focus depreciation is. Worse than any other car out there some have said. I really didn’t know either way so I decided to do a little market analysis with the only tools at my disposal, autotrader.com and truecar.com.

What I found is: No, the depreciation is generally no worse than its main competitors. BUT, that’s after accounting for the fact that the Focus appears to be the most highly discounted car out there. So relative to MSRP, yes the Focus is worth far less than its competitors. But relative to the heavily discounted price most people paid for their Focus, they’re not much worse off, if at all, than they’d be with a competitor. And they could be much worse off (lookin’ at you Cruze).

The problem is that you're comparing the car's trade-in value against its CURRENT sales price. A year ago, people were paying more for a new Focus than they are now.

The presence of incentives to boost sales has lowered resale values for owners.

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